Question

what is cloud computing?

Answer 1

That is actually a very broad question, but to put it simply, it's exactly what it says ... computing that occurs in or from the "cloud".

I'm not sure how far you are into your course work, but a cloud is basically any network. For example the Internet is a huge network. If you use a file storage service say like Dropbox, you are storing your files in a cloud ... the Internet and more specifically, Dropbox's network or servers. These days, when someone refers to the cloud they are referring to the Internet, but the cloud does not have to be the Internet; it could be the network at your work or any other network where your computing is done.

Likewise it is not limited to file storage. Google released their netbooks a few years ago. These computers have only a rudimentary OS (Chromium) that connects to Google servers. All of the apps, word processing, spreadsheet, etc., is distributed from their servers. It does not reside on the computer itself. This is another form of cloud computing and there are more. As I started with, this is a very broad question that requires a little research on your part to fully answer.

You can start with these articles:
http://bit.ly/1je4wqN - HSW (good article)
http://bit.ly/19uLia8 - PC Magazine (Internet cloud)
http://econ.st/1esPIBW - The Economist (how big businesses are expanding in the cloud)
http://intel.ly/MuuiZ4 - White paper from Intel detailing enterprise CC solutions)